Ancient Web: Vladimir Zabrodsky Brought Textbook Algorithms to REXX

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.

A whole library of computer-science algorithms, translated into REXX and placed on a free GeoCities homepage: that was Vladimir Zabrodsky's idea of a useful corner of the late-1990s Web.

See the original GeoCities address in the surviving gallery

Zabrodsky maintained his home page at SiliconValley/Garage/3323. The most substantial project associated with it was the Album of Algorithms and Techniques for Standard Rexx, a collection of textbook procedures rendered in a language better known for scripting than for algorithm textbooks.

A January 23, 2000 listing in Softpanorama's algorithms bulletin described approximately fifty algorithms translated from books by Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest, Knuth, Kruse, Martello and Toth, Sedgewick, and Wirth. Visitors could read the album online or take a ZIP copy away for offline study. The bulletin even pointed readers toward the little black butterfly icon used for the download.

That is a revealing detail. This was educational software packaged for people with imperfect connections and no assumption that the website would always be there.

A personal reference shelf that programmers actually cited

The homepage was not limited to the album. Contemporary REXX reference lists also linked Zabrodsky's An Introduction to the Rexx Programming Language. The old addresses pointed to an introductory HTML page and a separate aat/ directory for the algorithm collection.

The material circulated outside its original host. The OS/2 programming reference EDM2 still lists the album among its REXX code collections, describing it as a source of small routines rather than a conventional software library. A 1998-era Auto WGet Daemon project credited Zabrodsky's album among resources used or appreciated by its developers.

Zabrodsky also worked on selection algorithms beyond the role of curator. The NIST Dictionary of Algorithms and Data Structures credits his 1992 publication for MODIFIND, a selection method intended to reduce swaps. A 2008 communications paper cites a comparative study of three selection algorithms at the original GeoCities address. These references establish specific technical reach without requiring a claim that the homepage was famous.

A later REXX Language Association reference entry associates Zabrodsky with a much wider Algorithms and Functions collection, including sorting, string matching, number theory, matrices, and combinatorics. That later catalog should not be mistaken for a verified inventory of what was online in 2000.

The original GeoCities pages are not reliably readable through the surviving mirrors checked for this article. What remains independently documented is still unusually concrete: a name, an old address, a downloadable REXX teaching collection, and citations from programmers who found it worth keeping.

Explore the surviving REXX algorithm references.

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.